Arkansas draws the 7 seed and playing Butler.
I think we deserved the 6th seed, especially over Florida, but it is what it is.
If we win Friday, we most likely will play Purdue. An interesting match up, but Butler is no push over.
This is a better draw than we’ve had in several years! The hogs should be able to beat Butler. As far as the 2 seed to potentially face with a win Purdue is a better matchup over Duke or North Carolina whom you play a 8 on 5 game aginst the opponent and the refs.
This a a solid chance to make the sweet 16! Take care of the ball and play defense and they will advance.
I haven’t watched Butler in over a month.
This is Beard, Bardford, Trey and Macon’s time to shine and play good solid basketball. Im looking forward to these games. No matter what happens this has been a good season.
I like our draw. I looked at the 6 seeds. I’m not sure we would have gotten as good a draw. Honestly, I have us vs WVU in the Elite Eight. TCU (a six seed) most likely gets Arizona St. I think they beat TCU. FL is in our bracket, I think TT will beat them and we will beat TT. Houston has to go through Michigan (I think they will) and the winner gets UNC. And Miami gets TN in the round of 32. I think we actually have the best draw of all the 6/7 seeds.
I’ve been saying since the last week of the season, this time of year is all about matchups. I think we got a very favorable matchup and draw
We should be able to beat Butler, but lets not overlook them. They have beaten Villanova and push Xavier to the brink. Plus, we’ll be in their back yard, so I expect more fans to show up for them than us.
Same goes for Purdue and where we’re playing.
If we beat Butler the Purdue matchup is pretty simple. We hit the 3 at a higher rate and we are actually quicker than they are.
Keeping Gafford out of foul trouble will be key! I think this does beat the other potential draws of the 6 or 7 seeds.
TCU won’t survive the play in game winner! I’m not a TCU fan. I also think Florida and Texas Tech will have a tough game. I hope we don’t play Florida again!
It would be nice to play Wichita State and shock them!
I don’t think Wich St matches up with either us or WVU. And I agree, I don’t want FL again, however, I think Tech takes them on the two day turn around. Same thing with Purdue. I don’t think they’re geared for such a short turnaround with a fast paced team. They’ll tire out. Playing Tech after four days will allow us to prepare for them. I agree about TCU. I also have AUB going down in the first round.
i like our draw other than the location, we match up well with the teams in our side because we are different than all of them. i hope we would get in an all rough and tumble bracket with big, slow teams. though Butler is prolly the team most like us in our pod so makes for good matchup. if we hit shots, we could do some real damage in the bracket. go hogs, wps
[quote=“GeneralHog”]
Arkansas draws the 7 seed and playing Butler.
I think we deserved the 6th seed, especially over Florida, but it is what it is.
If we win Friday, we most likely will play Purdue. An interesting match up, but Butler is no push over.
[/quote]Butler is a 1.5 point favorite and have a 53% chance of winning. Therefore, Butler should have been a 6 or 7 seed so the selection committed should have treated Arkansas better.
Ya Butler scares the heck out of me, 10 seed my eye! They beat Villanova! This is a school that only 6 or 7 years ago made back to back trips to the finals of the Final Four. I realize that was obviously a different team and they now have a different coach but this is a big time basketball program. The Hogs need to be very focused!
Butler is no joke and I hope our Guys understand they are playing a program that is used to having success in the NCAA Tournament.
If our guys come out with a bunch of energy and are taking and making good shots, rebound we should have a good chance of advancing.
On the flip side if for some reason they don’t then Butler is disciplined enough to hand them an opening round loss.
Butler is not a very good rebounding team, so hopefully we can get some second chance opportunities throughout the game and cash in on them.
They don’t tend to turn the ball over based on what they’ve done this season and they do shoot a lot of 3’s, so we need to gaurd the 3 point shot and limit 2nd chance opportunities on their end.
If we do advance we will most likely match up with Purdue, which has a monster of a man down low in Haas, it will be key that Gafford stay out of foul trouble if we do get to this game otherwise they will simply feed the ball down in the block to him and he is pretty darn hard to match up with once he gets it in the paint.
We will definitely need to push the pace if w do advance to meet Purdue, if we can and make 40% of our 3’s then will have an opportunity to advance, if not then we probably don’t.
Can’t wait to see if these guys can finally get past the opening week, if they can who knows? It’s all about matchups in the Tournament and not necessarily the best teams that get to the sweet sixteen and beyond.
Go Hogs!
Watched a few Butler games and here’s my two cents:
Kelan Martin is legit! He’s athletic and has range. We need to put our best 4 on him on defense. Bailey has been getting the start with Thomas gone, but Bailey gets lost on defense about half the time and we can’t afford for him to lose Martin or Martin will pick us apart. Cook might be the best person to at least start and get things going, but who knows, Bailey wasn’t expected to do much in the tourney last season and he had North Carolina all messed up when he got in.
Butler seems to have trouble with teams with good big men. Butler isn’t very big. The biggest guy being 6’8, but they do start 3 guys that size. This is a game where Gafford can shine if he gets in position and works the middle of the floor instead of turning towards the backboard.
Keep them off the line!!! The SEC tourney, I thought was pretty good with the officials letting teams play, I hope that continues in the NCAA tourney. But if we get into a FT shooting contest with Butler, we’ll get creamed.
Guard the 3! Like a lot of SEC teams, Butler wants to rain 3’s, so we have got to defend the 3 point line.
Run, Run, Run, and oh yeah, RUN! Butler is athletic and they’ve got about 8 guys they rotate in regularly, BUT those rotations are mostly just to give the starters rest and that’s it. Arkansas can go 10 deep and should in this game. Push the tempo! I don’t think from what I’ve seen and read, that Butler has faced a team that likes to press and push the ball like we do. And Butler isn’t a fast pace team. So if we can get them to chase us, we’ll have a major advantage.
Protect the ball!!! Butler is great at protecting the ball, so we don’t need to do them any favors by turning the ball over ourselves.
On a side note, is anybody watching the NIT? I’m liking the 4 quarter system better. Far less stops in a game and the flow stays steady a lot better because of it.
I think this is a real toss up. MA better be ready to change the D as needed to disrupt their offense. Butler is usually well disciplined. Barford and Macon both need to be on their game.
Good read General. Thanks for the post.
Just watched the interviews with the coaches and players of Arkansas and Butler and it seems to me the Indiana media don’t seem to care to know much about our coach and players. Seemed like Arkansas was an after thought and not worth the time.
Arkansas media and Indiana media were asking a lot of questions to the Butler team, but when it came to Arkansas, Indiana media hardly asked anything, especially of the players.
I thought it was interesting that Butlers star player said he’d never heard of Gafford. That’s not unusual, but it’s the way he said it that made me think(and I hope Gafford does too) “you’re going to know his name before the games over!!!”
Gafford should have an opportunity to dominate the paint in this matchup and I hope he does.
If he does and our two leading scorers have 20 point games we should have a great chance of moving forward to round two.
A bunch of closely contested games yesterday and and really only one major upset, hopefully the same will be true today and we come out on top.
Our defense will be key to our success today, we need to mix up our defense until we find what gives Butler the most trouble and then stay with it.
Our bench needs to play well today and need to be able to go deep enough to be fresher in the last 5 minutes than Butler’s players.
Survive and advance.
Go Hogs!
So…When did aTm go back to the B12?
Jim Nantz just said Providence vs aTm was Big East vs B12. Knew these guys didn’t do research
That is one major drawback with CBS controlling the Tournament coverage.
They have a very limited amount of folks that cover the college game during the season and often don’t know much about the teams they are trying to cover.
Go Hogs!
We are on the cusp of losing our opening game of the NCAA Tournament by double figures to a Butler team that is simply tougher, more disciplined and better prepared and coached today.
That’s is the only way to explain what we just saw today, can’t blame anything on the referees today. Butler is just a much better all around team than our Razorbacks, they score from inside and outside, rebound on both ends of the floor and don’t beat themselves with turning the ball over much or taking bad shots.
Basically, they play the game the way it should be played.
This is a huge disappointment once again by getting to the dance, but failing once again to get past the 1st weekend much less the 1st game.
I like Coach Anderson, but I’m not certain he can take our program to greater heights. I’m not saying we should fire him after this season, but I don’t believe the University should make any further extensions to his contract either.
Obviously, Butler wasn’t the easiest draw for a first round game, but eventually you have to beat good teams in the Tournament and we just don’t have the roster to be able to accomplish that at this point under Coach Anderson and perhaps never will be. I hope I’m wrong, but time will be the judge of that in the end.
Go Hogs!